“Ask me how much I hate you right now.”
She closes her eyes for just a second. “How much do you hate me right now?” It doesn’t have the teasing edge it usually does; her voice is nervous, almost shaky.
“I don’t.” It’s such a cop-out. I should have told her the whole truth—I like you. I’vealwaysliked you—but I can’t bring myself to do it without knowing if she’s going to lose her shit and stop talking to me the rest of the summer. So, baby steps.
“I…” She looks back to the ceiling. “Don’t hate you, either.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”
She looks at me and smiles, but it’s a little sad. “Me, too.”
Sidney is like the stray cat we had at our house one summer. We fed her for a few weeks, and she purred and acted like she’d stay forever, but then suddenly she was gone. So before Sidney decides to bolt, I turn and press my lips to hers. She shifts, so she’s facing me, and props herself up on her elbow so we’re level. My hand rests on her waist, and hers wraps behind my back.
We’re still pressed together when a door slams and voices filter into the house. All four of our parents are home. Footstepsenter the hallway, and Sidney bolts up. I whisper in her ear, “My door is locked. Just be quiet.” And just to see what I can get away with, I kiss her behind her ear.
“Mine isn’t,” she says frantically, and launches herself off of the bed. In two long steps that are almost leaps, she’s in the bathroom, the door softly shutting behind her. A faucet turns on, the crack of light under the door goes dark, and just as strangely as Sidney appeared in my bedroom, she’s gone.
DAY 26
Asher
Today should feel different. At least I thought it would. But mostly it just feels the same. And not in a good way. In a really weird, déjà vu kind of way that is making my skin crawl like it used to when I was waiting for one of Sid’s pranks. When she jumped—literally—out of my bed last night, I didn’t expect to wake up this morning and make out at breakfast or anything. I didn’t even expect pancakes. That would have been sort of weird, too.
But I also didn’t expect that the kitchen would be empty when I walked in at six thirty. I’m not sure at what point it became our thing, but not having breakfast with Sidney feels wrong. And not just because I had to eat cereal and not pancakes.
“Ash?” I’m still sitting at the table at seven thirty, scrolling through my phone, when my mom files into the kitchen followed by my dad. “You’re up early.”You have no idea.
I tell her I couldn’t sleep, instead of telling her the truth: that I show up at six thirty every morning, hoping Sidney hasn’t decided to start taking it easy this summer. I wonder what my mom would say if I told her that after all these years of dragging me out of bed, I basically lie awake in my bed at 6 a.m. every day. That I can hardly make myself wait some mornings.Thinking it, I’m positive that saying I couldn’t sleep was the right choice.
Fifteen minutes later Kris and Tom filter out of the hallway, and Sid is a few steps behind, still in the shorts and tank she was wearing last night.In my bed.It’s almost eight o’clock, and I literally can’t remember the last time I saw her get up this late. Except for yesterday. The morning after the kiss. The day she decided that kissing me made her want to stay in her room the entire day, and then go out with another guy. Cue the ominous foreboding. Will that kiss forever be a before and after for me and Sidney? At the table, over my mom’s scrambled eggs and her dad’s coffee—which I know for a fact is not nearly as good as what I usually make her—we are silent. With each other, at least.
Sidney tells my mom she’s excited when she asks her about college starting in a month. She tells my dad she already got her dorm assignment. McLandry House, right across from one of the dining spots. Of course she already looked up her dorm on the map. My assignment still saysPENDINGand I’m starting to wonder if I’m going to be sleeping on a sidewalk somewhere.
Everyone eats, and I shove bacon and eggs into my mouth, not because I’m hungry, but because I don’t want to leave the table. I’m glad we don’t have to swim this morning, because watching her cross the lake not knowing where we stand would be pure torture. But deep in my gut I know it: I’ve royally screwed this all up. The kiss, the necklace, the second kiss in my bed—obviously it’s all too much. Not to mention that first kiss, the night of the party. There’s a good chance I’ll go to my grave without admitting that—drunk or not—I remember every second of that kiss in the grass.
I spend most of the morning in my room, trying to convince myself I’m not panicking. Or hiding from Sidney. But I’m totallyhiding from Sidney. Or maybe I’m waiting for her. Right. Maybe she’ll just show up in my bedroom again. Yes, I’m a delusional idiot. I text my best friend Todd and tell him the whole gruesome story of the last few days.
Sidney’s lying in the water, stretched out on her inner tube, her neck arched back, hair billowing in the water behind her. There’s a rope tethering her raft to the dock, like she’s our very own buoy. If she had a warning painted across her, I suspect it would saySTAY AWAYrather than the usualSWIM ZONE.
Seeing her out there reminds me of the first summer we met, and there’s nothing perilous in those memories. Except for that summer being its own kind of ending. Though I’ll never be able to explain how something that never started could be snuffed out so abruptly. I could walk to the end of the dock, but I don’t. Because she’s probably fallen asleep out there, and if I scare the crap out of her that won’t help my case. Or maybe because I’m a coward. And if this is another ending instead of a beginning, I’m not really in a rush to get there.
At dinner Sidney is quiet. Not when my mother comments about all of her running, or when hers asks about her future roommate—a girl from the other side of the state named Ellie. But when I finally will myself to say something—to bring up the fact that our meet schedule has gone up and two of our first three meets are at home—I get a two-word answer as she jabsa chicken breast with her fork:that’s exciting.I wonder if our parents notice the quiet between us, or if it’s just me.
It’s probably just me.
Sidney
I haven’t been actively avoiding Asher all day, but I wasn’t going out of my way to be near him, either. Which made me realize that for a while now, I was. I was putting myself in his way, making excuses to be where he was. I hadn’t realized how much of our time was spent together until today, when we spent almost none of it together. It felt… wrong. And that realization feels wrong in my head. It’s like a misshapen puzzle piece that doesn’t fit with everything I’ve always thought about Asher. About what the two of us have always added up to. But I can’t avoid him forever, and if we’re going to talk, I’d rather it be alone. So when I see him sitting on the couch, watching TV after everyone else has gone to bed (even though he has a TV in his room) I wonder if he feels the same.
He’s sitting on the small sofa, leaning to one side, his elbow propped up on the arm. Our parents all went to bed over an hour ago. Too many late nights, I guess. I sit on the armchair across the room from him, curling my legs under me and shoving a pillow under my side. I lean onto the arm like he does. We sit in silence, the sound of the TV filling the room, though it seems to float right past my ears. I’m not paying attention to anything but the fact that I’m in the same room as Asher, alone in the dark, for the first time since he told me he didn’t hate me. Since we were in his bed together. My cheeks flush at the thought of it. It was less than twenty-four hours ago, but it’s already starting to feel like a long-gone memory. Or a dream. I was in bed, maybe itwasa dream.
“You could sit, you know.” Asher smiles at me, and I’mcompletely unnerved by it. At how casually he does it now, and directed at me.
“Iamsitting.” I glance down at my chair, offering it as evidence.
“You could sit byme.”
I don’t move and Asher laughs. “You can’t see the TV over there. I know you can’t.”
